1. Field of the Invention (Technical Field)
The present invention relates to a stand-alone, liquid hydrocarbon slug-containing vapor recovery process system for application on natural gas well pads having either single or multiple wells.
2. Background Art
Natural gas production units can be can be integrated with the components (e.g., engine, emissions separator, circulating pump, educator, compressor, and controls) of a vapor recovery process system (referred to herein as a “VRSA”) such as that described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/677,985, now abandoned, entitled “Natural Gas Vapor Recovery Process System”, filed Feb. 22, 2007 (the specification and claims of which are incorporated herein by reference). In such an integrated system, a vessel can be incorporated to contain a liquid hydrocarbon slug to relieve the VRSA from having to handle vapors derived from liquid hydrocarbons beyond its instant capacity to do so. Such a slug-containing vessel operates at the flowing line pressure and captures a liquid hydrocarbon slug upstream of the high pressure separator. Such an integrated system requires a slug-containing vessel for each well that produces liquid hydrocarbon slugs greater than the instant capacity of the VRSA.
However, because many of the applications of a VRSA are on well pads that have several natural gas wells, and the wells are already equipped with production units of various designs, a design is needed for a stand-alone, slug-containing VRSA that (limited only by the gas capacity of the compressor) could recover all the hydrocarbon vapors from the liquids produced by multiple wells on a well pad.
Note that where the discussion herein refers to a number of publications by author(s) and year of publication, that, due to recent publication dates, certain publications are not to be considered as prior art vis-à-vis the present invention. Discussion of such publications herein is given for more complete background and is not to be construed as an admission that such publications are prior art for patentability determination purposes.